Zendesk Federated Search enables your end users to see content in your help center search results that lives externally from your help center. This means that when an end user searches in your help center, the search results are not just limited to your help center articles or community posts. Federated Search can extend its search to, for example: external knowledge bases, learning management software, blogs, and pages of your website. Your end users can also filter their search by type (for example by blog posts).
This article covers the following topics:
Related articles:
How Federated Search works
The Zendesk Federated Search feature consists of four main parts:
-
Federated Search external content API
-
Federated Search settings in your help center
-
New curlybars helpers for filtering search results in your theme
-
Support for Federated Search in the Copenhagen theme
Zendesk provides the REST API that allows you to ingest records of your search content into the Zendesk search indexes (see the following diagram). This is so you can build your own bespoke integration with the Zendesk REST API (see Enabling search across multiple help centers).
Ingesting your external records for Federated Search
After ingesting your first piece of content, the Federated Search will be visible. You can then ingest content records that you want indexed and ranked by your help center search engine. This generates search results with both help center content and external content in one unified ranking on the search results pages. To ingest external content for search, you must integrate the application hosting your external content, with the external content REST API. When an end user clicks an external content search result they are taken to the URL of that external content record.
Using the external content records REST API, you can integrate all 3rd party content that you want to be searchable with your help center search. For more information see the following topics in the Federated Search API reference docs:
If you are already familiar with the Help Center API, then you'll recognise a number of properties from articles, posts, and topics that overlap with external content records.
Each content record is associated with a content source object and a content type object, which are used to allow filtering by your end user. It works in the same way that articles and posts can be filtered by your help center (if using multiple help center search), and by type (for example, articles
or community
).
You can completely customize external content records, types, and sources to suit your needs, as each is given a unique ID. This allows you to group external records in the same way that articles and posts are grouped by the help center when using multiple help center search (see Enabling search across multiple help centers). You cannot currently designate one of the two existing types, articles
and community
, as an external record for filtering.
The types
property is an extension of the two types of Guide and Gather content, articles, and community posts.
Configuring Federated Search
You need to build your own integration with the Zendesk REST API then ingest the content you want to show up in your search results. If you have multiple help centers you can also choose which content sources are available on a help center by help center basis.
To enable external content to be searchable in your help center
- In Guide, click the Settings icon (
) in the sidebar.
- Under Search settings > Federated search, click Configure.
- In Configure Federated search, under External content, select the checkbox of the external content you also want to have included in searches.
- Click Save.
- (Optional) If you want the same external content to be searchable across multiple help centers, then from the account dropdown menu, select the help center you want to add the search availability to. Repeat steps 1 - 4.
After you enable external content to be searchable in your help center, you can configure Knowledge results to include external content in Knowledge searches. See Configuring the context panel in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
Setting up your help center theme for Federated Search
After ingesting your first piece of content the Federated Search UI will be visible, then you can manage whether you want it to be searchable in a help center or not. If you have multiple help centers, you can choose what content can be searchable, and in which help centers.

Customize your existing Guide theme
For external content to show up in search results in your help center search, you must have a theme that supports federated search results. To do this, use the latest version of the Copenhagen theme or replace the old {{help_center_filters}} and {{filters}} helpers with the new {{source_filters}} and {{type_filters}} helpers (see the Help Center templating cookbook).
Known limitations for Federated Search
At present, the following are all known limitations for Federated Search:
-
External content search results appear in help center search and Knowledge in the context panel, not in other Guide search-powered interfaces such as Instant Search or the Article Search API.
-
It is not possible to designate one of the two existing types,
articles
andcommunity
, to an external record for filtering.
22 Comments
Hi, if I use Copenhagen but the theme has been duplicated and then customised, will we still need to edit the theme ourselves or will it be updated as the Copenhagen themes are to be updated by Zendesk? Thanks
Hi Kelsey,
Once you customize the theme, then you don't get the automatic theme updates from Zendesk.
Thanks,
Maggie
Hi,
I'm very excited about this new feature but under Help Center settings, there is no category 'Search Settings' where I can configure the Federated Search.
Is anyone else not seeing this option in their Help Center settings?
Thanks, Amanda
Hey @...
This feature is currently only available for Guide/Suite Enterprise customers. Check you Guide subscription to see if it is available.
Augusto,
According to Ray at Zendesk, in addition to having the Guide/Suite Enterprise edition, you must also have the Support Enterprise edition, correct?
Hey @...,
Just checked with the team and you don't need Support Enterprise for this specific feature.
You do need Support Enterprise to Enable search across multiple help centers
Hope this clarifies it 🙂
Wanted to see if anyone could share a sample scripting for an external content record via REST API - thanks.
I wonder if federated search results will be accessible by AnswerBot and in Agent Workspace?
Hi @... both of those features are on our roadmap and expected to be delivered in 2021. Making federated search results available in Agent Workspace is the first of the two to be delivered.
Is there a specific reason why articles need to be added through API or am I missing something? Also happy to hear that there are plans for these to be accessible by AnswerBot and Agent Workspace!
Hi @..., we have chosen to expose an API to ingest external content records as the first interface because it allows for full flexibility to integrate with any other service that hosts the content you want to make discoverable through Help Center search, but we are currently working on adding no-code methods for adding external records as well. Unfortunately I can't give an ETA yet.
One thing we are noticing is that article filtering based upon title and URL is not unique enough. While we are using the description field, it would be good if federated search also supported the attribute to pull in tags (similar to how it works with Guide articles) to be able to present better search results.
Hi,
I'm looking for the best method to ingest content from an external website. I've tried testing the curl method for creating an external content record, but I am getting errors. Each property gets this message "curl: (6) Could not resolve host:".
I have successfully added my content source and types.
Also, does anyone have a suggestion on a quick way to create records for each page of an external website?
Thanks, Laura
Hey @..., can you send us the curl request that you're trying so we can take a look?
Thanks!
Eric
Hi Eric,
Sure, I did end up opening a ticket for this issue as well.
So I tried two methods. The first was creating a text file with the JSON data and then used the following curl request in my Command Prompt. I've edited out a few things for sharing.
Where the CreateContent.txt file included the following.
The second method I tried was just using a curl request.
Please let me know if you need anything else.
Thank you,
Laura
I was able to resolve my create content records issue by using the Postman application instead.
Here is a great article for anyone else who is new to APIs with Zendesk.
https://developer.zendesk.com/documentation/developer-tools/working-with-the-zendesk-apis/exploring-zendesk-apis-with-postman/
I would like to be able to set the base URL for my sources. For example, if my blog is at www.[domain].com/blog I want the source link to go there. Currently, it looks like the link is autogenerated to www.[domain].com URL. I can change this via customization in the theme but it would be nice to have that as part of the create source API. Is that something you may support in the future?
we are using zendesk suite enterprise version .but the search is not visible to me in our settings menu.
could you please help.
Hi Gaurav,
You need to add External Content via API first. As soon as you add one External content Record (which will require at least one Type and Source), the option should be enabled for you.
To create external content, please visit the following resources:
I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any further questions.
Hi Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen,
in a previous post you stated:
Is Federated search live for the Agent Workspace today (Specifically in 'Knowledge Capture')? If not, do we know then the live date is?
We have 'suggested articles' live on our Support Ticket Submission flow (as a means for ticket deflection) -- if we implement Federated Search, will external articles generate in the those results?
Thanks in advance!
Hello Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen and rest of the Product Management team,
Please let me know if federated search is now available for the articles/content that Answer Bot recommends. Curious also about the availability of that functionality for the Agent Workspace search as well.
Thanks.
Hi Guillermo, great question!
Unfortunately Federated search is not yet available in Answer Bot answers, but we intend to make it available to Answer Bot as well. I can't currently give an ETA though.
The good news on the other hand is that Federated search (external content) is available in the Knowledge tab in the Agent Workspace. See:
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